Sun Dance Quotes

“Every July, when Eli was growing up, his mother would close the cabin and move the family to the Sun Dance. Eli would help the other men set up the tepee, and then he and Norma and Camelot would run with the kids in the camp. They would ride horses and chase each other across the prairies, their freedom interrupted only by the ceremonies. Best of all, Eli liked the men’s dancing. The women would dance for four days, and then there would be a day of rest and the men would begin. Each afternoon, toward evening, the men would dance, and just before the sun set, one of the dancers would pick up a rifle and lead the other men to the edge of the camp, where the children waited. Eli and the rest of the children would stand in a pack and wave pieces of scrap paper at the dancers as the men attacked and fell back, surged forward and retreated, until finally, after several of these mock forays, the lead dancer would breach the fortress of children and fire the rifle, and all the children would fall down in a heap, laughing, full of fear and pleasure, the pieces of paper scattering across the land. Then the dancers would gather up the food that was piled around the flagpole—bread, macaroni, canned soup, sardines, coffee—and pass it out to the people. Later, after the camp settled in, Eli and Norma and Camelot would lie on their backs and watch the stars as they appeared among the tepee poles through the opening in the top of the tent. And each morning, because the sun returned and the people remembered, it would begin again.”
― Thomas King, Green Grass, Running Water

“When you hear the wind blowing through the pines, you can hear people, you can hear spirits during the dance. The spirits are in harmony with the dance, and they’ll sing and talk with us.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“My body bears the marks of sacrifice. I have four scars on my back from Big Mountain, two from hanging at the tree and two from when I was pulled by the horse. And I have two deep ones on my arms, right below my shoulders, from my first sun dance, and the scars from flesh offerings when old Bill Eagle Feather cut forty little squares of skin from my arms. And two more scars on my wrists where feathers had been stuck through at a sun dance. Then I have four piercings on each ear that were ceremoniously pierced by Fools Crow’s daughter. I also have scars from different accidents and confrontations, and I’m missing a few teeth as the result of too many fights. I call them honorable scars.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“I was sitting under the arbor after the sun dance, at Crow Dog’s Paradise, when Pewee’s youngest brother, Bobby, came up to me with tears in his eyes, telling me that Pewee had hanged himself in jail. They have TV cameras in the cell and the jailer is supposed to watch them all the time, but nobody was watching when Pewee died. There was a rumor that the jailer was making it with one of the girls who take the calls. There are always rumors. I was stunned. I felt a cold hand squeezing my chest. Then the tears came. Pewee was me, was all of us.”
― Mary Brave Bird